Drivers in the ten most traffic-jammed cities of U.S. spent on average—47 hours—more than a typical working week—behind the wheels each year. And in 2011, Americans spent 5.5 billion hours sitting in traffic, wasting $121 billion in gas and personal time. And the statistics range from 45 mins for 3 km and up to 3 hrs for 12 kms across Asian countries. As it is an unavoidable non-productive activity that every driver/passenger bears. At present navigation assistance applications/devices give user information about the extent of traffic—slow moving, heavy etc., as an overlay on routes to destination chosen. This only allows the user to decide on a route with lesser traffic or a route that is much longer yet avoids traffic. Though this gives the user information on possible delay if taking the route, not all types of events causing congestion can be predicted and this does not help a user who is already stuck in traffic. Applications like Waze depend on users to report traffic incidents and related updates while Applications like Glympse go one step ahead by reporting user's current whereabouts and associated delays to a set of contacts for a fixed time as specified by user. But these are again only various ways of reporting traffic and delay associated but not means of engaging user when he is amidst congestion. Therefore drivers can only resort to using their mobile phone to either perform some chores over calls or play games or access/post social updates or simply listen to radio/music from their vehicle infotainment unit.
Owing to constraints on the kinds of content/interactions that a driver can access/perform in the infotainment unit, he/she resorts to using a smartphone directly to perform any task. While reaching out to their smartphones to perform intended activities seems like an easy option it comes with the following hassles—to alternate between mobile interaction and driving controls counts for heavy distraction, lack of knowledge of whether an initiated task on mobile can be completed without data loss or repetitive data entry.
Based on a study conducted on effects of traffic conditions on attitudes towards in-vehicle agents (instructive Vs informative)—                Only in the context of light traffic participants preferred an instructive agent        Agents that help drivers' performance by e.g. providing preparatory information when approaching stressful situations might be appreciated more than agents interfering with driving decisions ‘on the spot’        Providing preparatory information can decrease stress reactions and increase perceived control, self-efficacy and performance        
Therefore in light of the above discussion, there is a need to develop an infotainment unit of a vehicle to recommend one or more relevant and essential tasks to the user during traffic transit time.